Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade you’ll have heard about the WordPress Content Management System. It powers somewhere in the region of 25% of all websites online. Latest estimates put that figure close to 80 MILLION websites, by the way. Indeed, we’ve been working with WordPress, building websites, awesome sales pages, online courses and membership websites and even custom online marketing mechanisms like Loyalty programs and stock management systems, using WordPress since 2007, so it’s really second nature to us. It’s a fantastic, but flawed system.

WordPress Website Design Costs

Of course, if you have heard of WordPress, you’ll know it’s what is known as an “Open Source” Content management system (CMS), meaning it’s absolutely, 100%, always and forever, free. Also worth noting you can get WordPress themes which install into WordPress for as little as $0 up to $100 for ultra-premium themes. There is a differentiation to make here.

The Difference Between WordPress.com and WordPress.org

WordPress.com and WordPress.org or not the same company, technically, though they did start out that way. WordPress.com is a hosted platform (software as service) with very limited appeal to serious marketers. Functionality and flexibility of themes and feature sets are not really controllable (you basically have to live with what they allow you). WordPress.org on the other hand is an Open Source CMS with an enormous community of developers behind it, creating and managing plugins for the community. This is the CMS you need to use for your business website.

So, while you can basically get a ‘free website’ without more than $100 outlaid, and install it in likely no more than 5 clicks, why in the world would you (should you) pay a company like ours an average of $4-6k to ‘build’ you a WordPress website? Is this whole thing a scam!? How could we ever justify that price for a WordPress website? Outrage! Lol.

The truth is probably pretty obvious, but in the interests of clarity, I’ll outline it all here so you can move with your best foot forward.

Is Building a WordPress Website Simply Choosing the Right Theme?

First, a ‘website’ is not just choosing a theme, or an aesthetic. Sure, some of the WordPress themes you can purchase for $59 or so come with demo content and look superb out of the box (we do actually use a select few of these for clients’ websites as well as totally custom designs). However, more and more, in every industry and niche, having a ‘nice looking website’ simply isn’t nearly enough to ensure that your website is a lead-generating magnet for prospects and new customers, or that it competes (and wins) against your competition. And I’m guessing your competition is pretty stiff these days, am I right? How to beat your competition with your website, you may ask?

In fact, if you watch my free “Pillars of online marketing” training series on my Youtube Channel, you’ll discover that this aesthetic aspect is little more than 1/5th of what you actually need to have a successful website for your brand.

Aesthetics form the first ‘pillar’ of online marketing, so of course you need to make sure they look attractive, clean and engaging. But after that, how do people interact with your website? What is their impression of your brand and its’ highly individual story?

You must (MUST) have a succinct, fluid User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), Conversion Strategy, traffic generating strategies, fulfillment mechanics, analytics and funnel systems in place on your website to appropriately siphon visitors (traffic) into buckets from those who are:

Not interested and never will be

Not interested now but could be in the future

Interested right now but need more convincing

Interested right now and want to buy now

So what do you need to do this? You need a funnel. A funnel is a strategic, automated sequence of pages, communications and deliverables which engage with your prospects and place them in the appropriate ‘buckets’, as above.

Each visitor type might have a very distinct, custom user flow through the website. So those in bucket 1 will leave and never come back (and that’s ok!), those in bucket 2 will want to be added to your marketing list so you can build trust for when they are ready, those in bucket 3 will also need this, but perhaps more of a proactive prompt to purchase through a strategic email sequence, and those in bucket 4 will need to be provided with easy steps to buy from you right now.

So how does this all happen? Hint: it’s not by magic. It’s strategic down to the nth degree. We start out with the process we call “Strategic Systematic Deployment” when building out our strategy and work our way through each component in a pragmatic, logical way. Here’s the exact process we follow to build the ideal WordPress website for our clients (or even our own agency website).

STAGE 1 – Due Diligence.

We get to know the clients’ brand, the products/services, the messaging, the competitors and the marketplace. We offer website design for so many industries that this is an essential component to our process and how we set up sites for success from day one.

STAGE 2 – User Journey Mapping

(UX, UI and Conversion Strategy). We create a unique journey in ‘sketch’ format for each audience type (e.g. those in the buckets above). This is really a skeleton outline of how they will interact with the site, and a step-by-step mapping of where they go, dynamically, when faced with specific decisions or Calls to Action on the site. This MUST be custom to be successful for the client site.

STAGE 3 – Wireframes.

From the ideal, optimized User Experience & user Interface, we plot out content blocks with strategic precision. Why a message should go here or there. Why a button should be placed here as opposed to there. This process plots out the pathway to success on your site and the great thing is that using WordPress.org we can build absolutely anything we desire. Hence a custom process coming to life through intelligent design and programming.

STAGE 4 – Aesthetic Design.

We start with the brand identity, color palette and existing assets, if these are present. This is key because on the website we need to create a consistent messaging and voice for the brand as this will lead to faster trust, better engagement and higher conversion rates, when visitors interact with the site.

This process can be done A) custom (blank canvas), B) Semi-custom (utilizing a premium WordPress theme but customizing key pages on the site like the homepage, to match our custom UX/UI) or C) “stock” (i.e. taking a premium theme and living with its’ in-built UX/UI and populating the site with client content.

STAGE 5 – WordPress Website Development Service.

We take the approved aesthetic designs, built on custom UX/UI and Conversion strategy and bring it to life in the development room on a staging server. Of course, we normally use WordPress and build the site on that CMS. This can be done using a stock WordPress Theme or a fully custom website design. This process can therefore take anywhere from 3-4 days to many months depending on the complexity and functionality involved in the site.

STAGE 6 – Mobile Optimization, Testing & Migrationto Final Server.

When the desktop version of the site is set, mobile optimization will be mostly done already but this is also the ideal time to fine tune mobile optimization for multiple devices. Once that’s done, we test all the links & performance of the website (e.g. image sizes, load times) and push the thing live. It’s an oddly exciting process for us!

STAGE 7 – Analytics & Refinement

The bit that most people leave to chance is one of the biggest mistakes they make in online marketing. Without an analytical approach to y our online assets you’ll be doing everything blind. Every decision you make post-launch in terms of improving your website should be guided and informed by strong analytics (and the analysis of those analytics, by someone who knows what they are looking for).

Only by looking at user behaviors on your website, for instance, can you measure the changes you make as compared to that initial baseline. Change some text here or there, add a video in this spot, a call to action button here or there… All those things should be measured so you can ensure you never regress from the point of launch.

*You’ll also have to factor in hosting costs. We recommend WP Engine for most uses and would genuinely recommend you stay away from companies like GoDaddy, 1and1, Bluehost, Hostgator and Network Solutions.

In Conclusion – WordPress Websites Need Us 🤗

… And THAT’S why we charge between $4-6k+ on average for a website. The process above involves multiple layers and strategies that most ‘website designers’ simply are not aware of. The psychological approach to marketing, the essential nature of a fluid, frictionless UX/UI and even a conversion strategy. Those things take time, expertise and crafting to ensure they work for the client in creating a lead-generating home on the web. And if you ignore one or other, well, the website simply won’t be as successful for your business as it should be.

Add to that, the importance of ensuring your website uses a consistent brand messaging and voice that reinforces your Brand/product benefits in a way that is conducive to building trust and, well, that’s a pretty tricky thing to achieve. Which is exactly why experts like us have continued to thrive in the marketplace, because there just aren’t many of us around.

Hopefully this helps lay out the features a successful website should have and why a good WordPress agency can make the world of difference to your business if you go the semi-custom or custom route.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below for us.

In this advisory video I discuss how we built our latest agency website. We used a theme from a company that’s been around for at least a decade (when we started in the online marketing industry) and absolutely nailed the ‘do it yourself’ website.

Website design is a troublesome area; you have to have the right strategy for UX/UI, Conversion, engagement and also on, but the right website platform (theme) is also essential.

In this free online marketing training I discuss the key things to look for in a theme from website performance, aesthetic design, UX/UI, usability and customization options.

If you missed Part 1; watch it first, here https://youtu.be/rt1qLn8OJ54

In this second part of the training I’ll show you the keys to the last stages of “Conversion”. Including how to design effective Calls to Action, a strategy for instant conversion success and what “Fulfillment Mechanics” mean to your long-term success in online marketing.